Cynthia Says... Create Accessible Web Sites

Kynn writes "The folks at ICDRI, in partnership with the Internet society and HiSoftware, bring us Cynthia Says, a free service to help you evaluate your Web pages for accessibility. In other words, it's roughly equivalent to what Bobby used to be, before it went commercial. It features what seems to be a cartoon version of my friend Cynthia Waddell, which is a bit creepy, but in all honesty it's a much better symbol than the old cartoon cop used with Bobby. I always thought there was an implied menace, as if the smiling chap would happily bludgeon you with his truncheon if you created an inaccessible Web site." If only.

Comments

Yet another Web Accessibility article

[BornInASmallTown]

I really hate to sound insensitive on this topic, but I'm tired of reading articles about web accessibility when it almost always boils down to one thing:

Don't forget to use ALT tags!

Ok, ok, so there's more to it than that. However, in my designs, I've begun to apply the following rule of thumb in regards to web accessibility:

The page is accessible if it can be properly viewed and navigated using a text-based browser (i.e. Lynx).

Lynx forces the page creator to use ALT tags liberally, and it reduces or eliminates the page's dependency on things like Javascript and Flash.

What else, really, has to be considered outside of the limitations of a text-based browser? I'd love to read some comments from folks with more expertise in this area.

Re:Yet another Web Accessibility article

[JimDabell]

Don't forget to use ALT tags!

I'd take advice like that with a pinch of salt, as the person dispensing it clearly demonstrates no understanding of the basic structure of an HTML document.

There is no such thing as an "alt tag". There is an alt attribute, which is a completely different thing.

The page is accessible if it can be properly viewed and navigated using a text-based browser (i.e. Lynx).

That's a dangerous assumption. Take guiltless image use as an example. Works fine in lynx, but fails miserably when you use a browser that renders CSS but does not display background images.

Website accessibility is a complex topic, and there's no way you can automatically test something like this. The best you can do is provide hints on what to look for.

I'm not particularly inclined to trust Cynthia, as the report document produced uses font sizes set at 12px and 10px verdana (!), and gives horizontal scrolling at 1024x768.

One tool I have found to be of high quality is Accessibility Valet.

Her own medicine

[bertilow]

So, I checked my home page with Cynthia, and I got some complaints. They were reasonable. But then I saved the report Cynthia produced, and had her check her own code.

Here it is:

http://www.bertilow.com/div/cynthias_medicine/

And here's her verdict:

Verified File Name:
http://www.bertilow.com/div/cynthias_medicine/
Emulated Browser: Cynthia 1.0
Date and Time: 3/14/2003 8:34:15 PM
Failed Automated Verification
Emulated Browser: Cynthia 1.0

She failed! The reason is the crappy markup with loads of deprecated stuff. What were they thinking?

Re:Yet another Web Accessibility article

[JimDabell]

If your javascript function returns a specific value (possibly 0, but I don't remember for sure), the browser won't follow the link after opening the popup.

You need to return false:

<a href="alternative.html" onclick="dostuff(); return false;">...</a>

Some sites look at your user-agent string and tell you to fuck off if they don't recognize that browser

For instance, argos.co.uk will refuse to handle gecko-based browsers. Idiocy.

Although their web pages seem to render perfectly in Lynx/w3m/elinks/Mozilla/Konquerer/Opera, you can only log into the site with a user-agent of IE/Netscape.

...and of course, their logs show that people only use ie/netscape when visiting their site (because people using other browsers lie in their ua string, or just can't access the site at all). It's a vicious circle.